oakland at center grove, IN

[JoeyC]

On 8/25/2023 at 11:28 PM, MSURacer said:

I’ve been there many times, Indiana are not true Yankees. It’s basically the south’s middle finger. 
 

But regardless of the result, good on Oakland for scheduling. Respect. 

Agreed.

[JoeyC]

On 8/26/2023 at 9:28 AM, OutofStater79 said:

Haha. So true. very well said. And it's not just Indiana. I've lived in Chicago and Indianapolis my entire life. Alot of Indiana residents will tell you if they could live anywhere it would be Nashville, Knoxville, Gatlinburg or some rural area in Tennessee. Nashville is very trendy in Chicago now as well. And Nashville is taking up the sports radio airwaives in Chicago now that hte Sox are threatening to move and Nashville seems to be on the verge of getting an MLB team. Side note, if Gerry Reinsdorf or one of his sons actually moves the Sox to Nashville, stay far away. He's the epitome of an owner only caring about ROI to shareholders and not on field success. He's the worst. Anyways, My wife, raised in Indiana, was born in Murfreesboro so I've been to your area a few times. Drove through Nashville in July on my way down to the Gulf Coast. A lot of Midwesterners have embraced the Southern States and love it down there. At this point I just think of the NE as Yankees. 

 

Anyways, as a huge Big Ten and SEC fan I was looking forward to watching this one. Indiana's best teams typicallly only schedule around Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and the Louisville powers becasue Indiana used to have a travel rule that prevented their teams from playing anyone outside of a certain distance from the nearest Indiana state line. It was fun to see a team from Tennessee come up to the Indy 'burbs. 

 

To add some perspective, Center Grove is a f'n machine. Their coach has built a phenomenal culture there and they have complete buy in from the community. They have a very large Youth League and all teams run Varsity playbooks. They typically run more of the Wing T but have opened it up lately on offense as this is now their 2nd recent QB who can throw the ball and will be playing Power 5 level football. Their best team was from 2 years ago when they had Tayven Jackson at QB (transferred from Tennessee to IU in the offseason), some D1 recruits at the skill position, and an entire DL that secured Power 5 D1 scholarships. The best of that bunch was Caden Curry who will be seeing time for Ohio State this year as a SO. at DE and will likely end up in the NFL. They also had a beast of a RB who trucked everyone but couldn't get Power 5 offers. He ended up going to Ball State, trucked the MAC, and UCLA quickly picked him up out of the transfer portal. He'll likely be their starting RB.

 

Anyways, for some perspective. Lakewood St. Edward beat Center Grove fairly easily in Week 1. But, as someone said above, that team is loaded with Power 5 recruits including multiple Big Ten recruits on their O-Line. They're basically a Cleveland pseudo All-Star team. They're definately better than Center Grove, but Center Grove also didn't play a very good game. On the flip side, Indianapolis Ben Davis , who is 1 or maybe 2 of the teams in Indiana capable of beating Center Grove and very similiar in looks to Oakland, kicked Cincinnati Moeller to the curb in Week 1 (49-28) and Moeller is a Top 5 Ohio Team. I think it's pointless to draw conclusions about Tennessee football because of Center Grove's 2 games. 

Oakland was who I thought they would be. Big, fast, aggressive, and hard hitting. They just ran into a buzzaw last night. It happens. IMO, there's really no secret to HS football. It's typically demographics and socioeconomics. Large suburban schools with a plethora of talent and famililes that can afford speciialized training for their kids typically dominant in every state. Then, throw in the City Catholic schools. Though, I'm not sure how big of a problem the Catholic schools are in the South. 

Agreed. It's more of an interior vs coastal regions now I think. Impressive football teams in Indiana it seems. 1. Southeast is more protestant 2. We forced the religious teams that would be an issue into their own division. 3. Tennessee has long been full of mostly poor whites, thus less development outside of Nashville(Titans and MTSU) and Knoxville(Vols). Lot of our counties barely have anybody in em either. 

[JoeyC]

On 8/28/2023 at 8:35 AM, SweetScience said:

Really we’re all more alike than we think or want to believe we are, and that goes for everyone of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. When I was in the Navy, my 2 best friends were a Puerto Rican guy and a Mexican guy. They both had the exact same traditional values I was brought up with. But really, you can even find common ground with anyone, even if they don’t believe the same as you a lot of times. We all want the same things, for the most part, we just have a different means of getting there. People (I guess it’s in our nature) always search for differences, and we never spend any time at all searching for common ground. Sorry for waxing philosophical, but reading those comments made me think about that stuff.

I'd say most of the country is similar except for uppity white(or black female) liberals from well to do parts of coastal areas. Crazy how we let that small vocal minority seem larger than they are.

[bbragg]

On 8/26/2023 at 8:28 PM, Augustus said:

At least I am batting.

And I am breathing.

[JustinBuck]

Center Grove out of the Indiana playoffs. I wonder how Oakland would match up with them at this point?

[Southtowner]

13 minutes ago, JustinBuck said:

Center Grove out of the Indiana playoffs. I wonder how Oakland would match up with them at this point?

Not sure.

But wanted to say I hope Crown Point takes the 6A title in IN.  Got some family up that way.  Davis will be a big favorite I suppose. 

[MidTennFootball]

Honestly, I still think it's still a win for Center Grove and I still think they'd beat any  public school in TN but they no doubt made Oakland better 

[Southtowner]

On 8/25/2023 at 10:28 PM, MSURacer said:

I’ve been there many times, Indiana are not true Yankees. It’s basically the south’s middle finger. 
 

But regardless of the result, good on Oakland for scheduling. Respect. 

So true.  

Northern hillbillies.